Describing 3-month old GST as a "fairly encouraging exercise",Nestle India CMDSuresh Narayanan said there are a few operational issues that are still being ironed out. Since the early part of July we had settling issues but August was certainly better and September has also been reasonably good as far as settling into the GST regime is concerned.

As far as the FMCG industry is concerned, he said, with the passage of time there would be improvement and settling into the new indirect tax regime will turn better.

FMCG companies had witnessed slowdown and reported tepid sales in the April-June quarter because of destocking by trade partners, who purchased limited inventory due to uncertainty ahead of implementation of the Goods and services tax(GST) from July 1.

When asked about the company's plans of expanding the product portfolio and getting into new categories, Narayanan said it will be looking at expanding the scope of existing products and also selectively getting into new categories.

Reflecting on the company's ambition of double digit growth, he said in terms of reported sales there is a GST impact of almost 525 basis points that gets impacted on the company's sales, therefore the number might be a little lower that what a double digit would be.

Naraynan also said "As far as the company is concerned, we had recorded an 8.8 per cent growth last quarter and we had impact of GST in that and we were within the whisker of what we were looking at and therefore the ambition of double digit growth is something I would not like to lose right now.”

The information contained herein is of generic nature only, and Franchise India is not, by means of
this website or any part thereof, rendering professional advice or services. Before making any
decision or
taking any action that might affect your finances or business, you should consult a qualified
professional advisor. Your use of this website or any of its pages or links given, is at your own
risk and you assume full responsibility and risk of loss resulting from your usage. With respect to
use of the website, kindly visit www.franchiseindia.com/terms.